


A Man Like That

by hutchynstarsk



Category: Common Law
Genre: Angst, Asexuality, Divorce, F/M, Het, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 13:05:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchynstarsk/pseuds/hutchynstarsk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wes can never talk about one of the most important reasons his marriage failed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man Like That

**Author's Note:**

> None of these characters are mine, and I mean no disrespect with this interpretation of them. I don’t make money from this.

 

**A Man Like That**

**  
by Allie**

There are a number of things Wes doesn’t ask Travis about. Sometimes, it’s because he knows the answer. Other times it’s because he doesn’t want to know.

Travis’s dating fits both categories.

Once upon a time, Wes felt certain that Travis dated so much just to be a big man, to prove himself to the world. Disgust and something like pity were all Wes could feel about that.

People should be like Wes: in control. It would do good for Travis to marry, settle down.

#

Wes loved Alex. He loved her soft skin, her beautiful face, and her neat hair. He loved her mind and her laugh and that little gasp in her voice when she laughed too hard. He loved sitting on the couch with an arm around her while they watched movies together.

He even loved it when they were too busy to be together and just worked near one another, each in their own world, but orbiting one another in silence. He was happy with Alex, as happy as he could be with anyone. They just _fit_. And they had a house and a car and a lawn, and everything was perfect. _Perfect_.

Until it wasn’t anymore.

#

It wasn’t something he really ever thought about. It was just always Alex’s idea when they had sex. Alex who put on a fancy negligee and did a sultry walk. Alex who stood in the doorway with one hand raised, smiling. “Ready for bed?”

‘In a minute’ was the wrong answer. It took him almost six months to learn that, to learn why she got upset with him.

But he didn’t learn _enough_. He didn’t learn to act like Travis.

The night she asked him for a divorce, her feet were bare. She looked particularly pretty with her smooth, shapely legs bare below the short hem of her nightgown. Her hair was almost perfectly even, but her face was blotchy from crying.

Wes stood there in his shoes, coming home late from work, feeling clumsy and too large, hating that she was crying and he didn’t know why.

When she said _I want a divorce_ , he still didn’t know why.

He took a step forward. “But I love you. We can make this work. I know my new job has been—”

She shook her head, eyes full of pain. “It’s not the job, it’s everything, Wes. Some part of me will always love you, but I can’t live like this. You—you never let me in. You live in your own head so much, there’s no room for me in your life. We… we aren’t _together_ , Wes. You don’t even want me. I’m not sure you ever did.”

He moved forward and took her into his arms. “Alex, what are you talking about? I love you. I’m _in love_ with you.”

She shook her head. “You aren’t. You—you never want to sleep with me. It’s like it’s a duty to you. I’m tired of feeling like an unnatural wife for wanting sex. What is wrong with me?” she demanded. “What has ever been wrong with me? Why don’t you look at me the way Travis looks at women? He can make a woman feel wanted. But I feel like I’m just a brick, part of the house to you.”

Wes didn’t know what to say. The things he did say, she didn’t listen to. It wasn’t enough to love her, to hold her, to share their life. He had to be as randy as Travis. And he didn’t know how to do that. It had always been false when he tried.

That had been one of the many, many, many good things about marrying Alex. He didn’t have to fake it anymore. They were there for each other, and he didn’t have to keep trying to prove what a man he was by chasing women.

Women that most of the time, he’d never particularly wanted to chase in the first place.

#

After the divorce, every time he saw Travis it rubbed him raw, wrong inside. _Travis_ was Alex’s ideal man, at least in the libido department. Travis was the right kind of man, because he made women feel “wanted.”

Never mind that Wes had given his life to Alex, would still give his life for Alex. Never mind that he would never have run around the way Travis did, that he wanted _her_ , not just her body, but her mind and their time together and the way they made each other breakfast and laughed at jokes only half-expressed.

Never mind all that. It wasn’t good enough. Once again, he wasn’t ‘man enough’ because he cared about more than sex. Actually, about most anything other than sex.

“What’s the matter with you?” Travis asked one day, smiling that stupid, bright, cheerful smile that everyone fell for, all the time. Even Wes used to. “You act like you’re not getting any.”

“You can shut up now.” Wes’s voice was cold and hard.

Travis laughed. “Oh, man, I’m sorry, brother. I can hook you up—”

“Shut up, before I shut you up. Permanently.”

They stared at each other. He saw the shock in Travis’s eyes, felt it mirrored in his own soul. You didn’t, you simply didn’t threaten your partner.

“Hey, man, if that’s the way it is, find your own dates.” Travis raised his hands, playing cool and unconcerned. When he walked past, he shoved Wes with his shoulder. “Oops.”

That was the beginning of the bad times. And he didn’t want to think about that, either.

#

After the divorce, Alex still talked to him. Still let him come over to water the lawn. Still called him when raccoons invaded. She even still lived in their house, but now without him.

She wasn’t cold or angry with him. If anything, she treated him like a friend. The difference in her was strange: as if she’d stopped expecting anything from him. As if he was her brother and she knew he’d grow up someday but she didn’t care all that much. Not like a wife would.

He tried, once, to prove to her how desirable she was. Tried acting like Travis with the flirting and the touching and the lines.

He didn’t want to think about how that had worked, either.

#

The things they talked about in therapy were for him and Travis. Sometimes they hit on their real issues, sometimes they didn’t.

The homework was invariably stupid.

He had little respect for the prying, voyeuristic attitude of the whole class.

But sometimes, he wished there was truly a safe place where he could ask, and find answers to, questions about his and Alex’s breakup. Questions like, _Why can’t the love I can give her be enough_? And, _Why don’t I particularly care about having sex—and never have_ _cared_?

But all those questions led to the revelation that there was something deeply, fundamentally flawed with Wes. Something that the world would laugh at, his partner would laugh at, his wife could resent him for without him even knowing. And he hadn’t known; all this time, he hadn’t known.

Men, “real men,” were supposed to want sex like Travis did. All. The. Time. It wasn’t fair, and it didn’t fit Wes. He just didn’t feel that way. But if his wife could want a divorce at least partly because of it, then it would never really be safe to talk about it.

If someone as smart, beautiful, and caring as Alex could toss him aside because of this, then there was nowhere in the world it was safe to admit it.

On days where he thought about this, it was easy to hate Travis.

On days when Travis enthused about some new girl he’d met, it was easy to hate Travis.

On days when Travis took it for granted that everyone was like him and wanted sex all the time, it was really, really, _really_ easy to hate Travis.

And he didn’t know how he could ever stop hating Travis in those moments, until he learned to stop hating himself for being different.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This probably won’t line up with later canon. It was just an idea that occurred to me about Wes’s character. I look forward to learning more about the characters for real as I continue to watch the show.


End file.
